- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Rivière-du-Nord
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $105,330.31
- Government Page
- May/23/24 3:55:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not think that the leader of the Bloc Québécois has any designs on leading Quebec, but we shall see. I will leave it to him to respond to that.
We do not want to further tax people in order to provide them services. We want efficiency. We want every penny paid by Quebeckers in taxes, whether to Quebec City or Ottawa, to be used 100% efficiently. There is a captain of health and that is Quebec's health minister. Transfer money to him and let him manage it. If he does not manage it properly, then I can guarantee that Quebeckers will be there to tell him, to call him out and to get rid of him in the next election.
That is how it is done. We must not get involved in what is happening in other people's sandboxes.
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- Sep/19/23 9:06:23 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I hope that what I am about to say will not surprise my esteemed colleague, for whom I have a great deal of respect. No, Mr. Harper did not call me.
I understand his questions. I have the same questions. As I said earlier, this raises a number of questions. Who governs this country? I tell my constituents that if they want reassurance, they have to make sure they have Bloc Québécois members in Ottawa. Without us, no one can say that everything is fine.
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- Feb/9/23 12:19:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, Ottawa has the right to provide comments. We all have the right to provide comments, because we live in a free country. Freedom of expression is important.
I am not saying it does not have the right to comment. I am saying that this is a provincial matter. My colleague across the way has no authority to dictate to the Ontario government how it must act, any more than he has the authority to dictate to the Quebec government how it must act. That is up to the provincial legislatures and Parliament to decide. It is not up to the government.
Once again, we must live with the law as written. Ontario's democracy does not need to be identical to Quebec's democracy or to that of the other provinces.
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- Nov/1/22 2:57:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, worst of all, when the Liberals saw the truck convoy driving towards Ottawa, they did not put any plans in place to stop them from laying siege to the city. They had no plan for how to get them to leave, either. The Liberals developed a communication strategy to escalate the crisis, because they thought they could score political points.
Not only did they allow the protesters to hold the city of Ottawa hostage, but their strategy led to over three weeks of tension. How can the minister justify his strategy to the people who were held prisoner in their own city?
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- Oct/26/22 3:24:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, at the Rouleau commission, three police forces confirmed that the Emergencies Act was never needed to end the truckers' occupation in Ottawa.
The RCMP, the Ontario Provincial Police and the Ottawa Police Service all told us they did not need it. The RCMP even warned the feds, hours before they invoked the act, that they had not yet exhausted all available tools.
Can the Prime Minister explain why he invoked the Emergencies Act against the RCMP's advice?
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- Oct/20/22 2:40:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to be a Bloc MP. It was not just a lack of coordination between governments that allowed the trucker convoy to stay in Ottawa for 24 days, it was a lack of leadership. The request from the City of Ottawa was simple: It wanted 1,800 police officers, from anywhere possible.
How many did the federal government send? It sent 250 RCMP officers out of the 1,800 that had been requested. The majority of those officers were deployed not to the streets of Ottawa, but in front of the Prime Minister's house and Parliament.
If the Prime Minister truly believed that the situation was serious enough to warrant protecting his home, did he not think that it was equally justified to protect the public?
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- Oct/18/22 2:57:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the problem is that they did not manage the crisis. The total lack of leadership on the part of this government is telling. That is what the mayor of Ottawa, Jim Watson, showed the commission today.
He personally spoke with the Prime Minister on January 31, day three of the crisis, to ask for police reinforcements. He then spoke with the Minister of Public Safety on February 3. It took three more weeks for Ottawa to take action, three weeks. If the situation was so urgent that the Emergencies Act needed to be invoked, then why did it take three weeks to deploy police officers? It is urgent, but there is no rush?
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- Oct/18/22 2:56:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, nearly nine months ago, convoys of transport trucks were heading to Ottawa, announcing their plans to lay siege to the city.
We learned yesterday that hotel operators knew they were coming. They warned the City of Ottawa that, in the middle of the pandemic, 15,000 people were trying to book every hotel room in the city for three months. Ultimately, only the federal government did not see the siege coming.
When the government says that it was in constant communication with the City of Ottawa before the trucks arrived, what were they talking about, if not this? Were they exchanging recipes?
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday there were another three shootings in less than six hours in Montreal, and the Government of Quebec has said that it has not yet received the money it was promised to combat gun violence.
Quebec is putting in the work. For example, it has announced a special patrol to combat gun trafficking in Akwesasne. Ottawa, however, has not even sent Quebec the money it was promised. How shameful.
When will the government finally transfer the money it promised Quebec? Montreal has a gun problem right now, not “one day”, “maybe”, “if we have the time”, “if it is not too hot” or “if it is not raining”. The problem is now. I also want to inform the minister that this has nothing to do with Bill C‑21.
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- Jun/9/22 2:54:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Quebec did not wait for Ottawa and just offered the Akwesasne Mohawk Police Service $6.2 million to patrol the St. Lawrence river for arms traffickers 24 hours a day.
It is a good thing that Quebec did not wait because Quebec's public safety minister informed us today that she still has not received a single cent of the money promised by Ottawa months ago.
She said that she is still waiting to sign the agreement with the federal government for the money it put on the table to have Quebec police forces address armed violence. She repeated her appeal to the minister. Where is the money?
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- May/30/22 2:58:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we would all like to believe that we are safe from gun violence and that our children are protected.
In Montreal, just last week, someone shot up a day care centre. Fortunately, there were no casualties. Fortunately, the day care centre was empty. However, gun culture is emerging in Montreal.
Again, we simply cannot allow the situation to deteriorate. The mayor of Montreal, the Premier of Quebec and the Bloc Québécois are once again calling for Ottawa to ban handguns.
When will the minister finally do what everyone in Quebec is waiting for him to do?
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- Feb/21/22 2:15:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, 25 days after the first trucks of the convoy of occupiers arrived, the streets of Ottawa are finally free. It is all thanks to the exceptionally well coordinated work of seven police forces, including the Sûreté du Québec.
On behalf of the Bloc Québécois, I want to thank all the officers who helped put an end to the siege of Ottawa and Parliament Hill. They showed impressive professionalism and unfailing patience.
Three days ago, it seemed almost impossible to imagine a peaceful resolution to this occupation without confrontation, but that is the scenario that literally materialized before our eyes while we could watch the operation from our office windows.
In closing, a special acknowledgment goes to the impeccable work of the Parliamentary Protective Service, thanks to which members could continue to work safely in the name of democracy, despite circumstances that could have been dangerous.
I thank every one of them for their professionalism and effectiveness.
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- Feb/20/22 4:19:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.
Does he believe that Canada's current laws and the provinces' current resources and powers are so insufficient as to warrant federal intervention when a protest takes place or streets get blocked? If so, should we expect the Emergencies Act to be invoked every time there is a protest on Wellington Street in Ottawa?
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